Hi jerkoff and welcome to the forum
Just fyi there is generally a thread for the discussing of each news piece or notable blog that comes along which you'll find in the Press section. For the one you're referring to here the discussion has been going on at
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168333.0Whilst I'm here I will comment on a couple of the points you made: Regarding your supposedly 'fictitious market cap' would you say the market cap of gold is 'fictitious' just because the vast majority of it hasn't been traded for some time? In neither case does it need to have been traded for it to be providing value to its owners. As for 20k BTC crashing the market 'down to $10 I'm guessing you've not spent much time watching the size of the trades that go through even those markets we can see let alone many p2p ones we can't? 5k btc trades are pretty common and recently barely cause a blip in the charts. 10k trades are not that infrequent and 20k trades are not unknown either. If you are really interested in researching how realistic your assumptions are there are those over in the Speculation subforum who are pretty adept at finding their way round the figures and could give you something more concrete on which to draw your conclusions.
I've read that thread now, and obviously it has a few negative replies. In a bubble, everyone has rose tinted glasses and is unable to see the risks.
Regarding gold, even though 99% of gold remains in vaults, last week gold dropped from $1600 to $1540 (and then rebounded to $1580 to close for the week). That's the danger, if a large majority of a commodity is held for keeps, the remainding few percent that speculators hold can fluctuate the price up and down a lot, causing the inactive stashes profits and losses way beyond the capital used for influencing those markets.
I am a stock investor, and I see the market that way. There is always risk. In a bubble, gamblers ignore that and only consider profit, yet in the end they're the ones suffering the losses.
Neither you nor I know what proportion of the money currently held is in the hands of those ignoring risk and considering only profit. Of course there are some whilst others are very aware of the risk and even if invested heavily, see an immense potential. You're right about the disproportionate influence of smaller amounts if most of it is inactive - such as with gold. And with gold it is even worse because the institutions holding the bulk of it have both the means and a vested interested in ensuring it doesn't look attractive a proposition despite the dire straits of their fiat. I fail to see why (unless the conspiracy theorists are right with their claim that the FBI or Illuminati are behind Bitcoin) early adopters holding on to a lot would want to destroy that which is in their best interest to succeed.
I know for at least some of us (if one counts as some!) here, one of the reasons we read all the negative reports and try to give adequate attention to forum posts supporting them is there may be some gem of information or a different perspective that could help us understand the risks better and empower us to act accordingly. Of course it is a challenge for those heavily invested not to be biased towards perspectives that support our position just as it is a challenge for those who have decided not to invest much (or at all) - especially those such as the piece's author who have watched and not not bought for some time whilst watching those that did gain - not to see arguments against their own viewpoint.
You say stock is your bag and I think I'm tending to see a trend with stock traders and mainstream economists both who seem to be looking for Bitcoin's fundamentals in all the wrong places - and will draw their conclusions accordingly. Each to his own.
